Eddie

"Everyone knows you're a bastard Eddie. Everyone!"

Eddie's hand stopped a foot from Ellie's red face. He sucked so hard on his cigarette that it had to either explode or be inhaled. Hid hand was curiously steady for a drinker of his prodigiousness.

His voice was low. "Ellie, you know you can't say things like that to me." He paused as though struggling with an original idea. "They make me angry."

"Oh Eddie! What fucking difference does that make?"

Eddie lowered his now shaking hand and stepped back. He turned away from Ellie and placed his hands on the crummy kitchen worktop.

Ellie stood still, unsure of the next move.

When he turned back round his face was red and the cigarette had gone. In his unsteady hand he held the larger kitchen knife, still showing blood from its earlier use.

Ellie's eyes went wide. And then wider, as Eddie sunk the knife into her left side, high up where he thought the heart might be. He didn't pull it back out.

She slumped to her knees, wide eyes sagging. The knife dug deeper as she fell on her side, and blood frothed from the increased gash.

Eddie stared at the corpse. He didn't know what to do. He'd never had to clean the floor before.

*          *          *

Maude and Pritchard woke together, as twins are wont to. They knew something wasn't right. The house was too quiet. Mum should have been making noise somewhere, but she wasn't.

They clambered from their bunks, thin legs protruding from ill-fitting pyjamas, goose pimpled and pale. Light had penetrated the worn curtains; they were already late for school.

They arrived downstairs to find Dad in the kitchen. This was a joyful surprise. "Dad! What are you doing here? Where's Mum?"

"She's gone away for a bit. On holiday."

The twins knew their Dad never really looked good, but they could both sense something was very wrong. His eyes were more red than white and the hand holding his cigarette was shaking so much that the lit tip was glowing red hot.

"The floor's wet Dad. Did you spill something?"

Eddie said nothing but made an odd noise. His children noticed this, but didn't say, the inexperience of youth overruled by the survival instinct of millennia.

They made their own breakfast that morning, but both thought the cornflakes tasted funny. Eddie ate nothing.

NeverSeconds

Crazy story in the news today regarding a young girl and her intrepid blog NeverSeconds.  

She had been taking pictures of her school lunches and posting them on the blog, along with a rating of the afore-mentioned meal. Massively popular and enlightening to folk around the world. And she was also using her web traffic to raise money for charity.

The local council got involved today, banning all photographs in the school canteen, effectively attempting to stifle the blog. Their reasoning was that the canteen staff were upset by the indirect criticism (if the food was rubbish then they must also be so).

This caused a storm.

Twitter evangelists were out in force, social media rolled into action and soon the local council backtracked, and the blog will return.

And the heightened awareness of the blog has dramatically increased the charitable giving via the site.

So all's well that ends well...

Apart from a couple of things:

There has been all sort of fuss recently about school dinners, but it doesn't seem to have done much good - they still look pretty ropey. But do the kids get too much choice? Are they too fussy? Just a thought.

Surely the council were aware of the popularity of the blog - it had been in national news prior to this - before they attempted to silence a nine year old girl? What reaction did they expect when they attempted to stifle free speech? Have our traditional organisations still not adapted to the modern era and the rise of virtuality?

Certainly proves the point that no publicity is bad publicity.

I do read fun books. I do read writing books. I do read writing websites. And I do try to write. I don't know what's most important, but I do whatever takes my fancy, when I have the time (and whoever has enough of that?).

But I am lazy. I enjoy reading more than writing. Less effort. Unless it's Mr George R R Martin. And it's absolutely not a wonder he takes so long to write the Game of Thrones books.

So I figure if I write a blog then at least I am writing, getting some practice. Can't be bad. And although it's public I seriously doubt anyone will be reading, so I don't have the confidence crisis of cyberpeeps critiquing my feeble efforts. 
 
Cool website: http://www.creativecopychallenge.com/.

Been enjoying working on the prompts, though not as often as I would like. They're challenging but possible, and some nice ideas coalesce from the murky depths. Good fun to read what the other posters come up with. Amazing what dishes can be made with the same ingredients - it's all in the cooking.
 
Found some short pieces I had written below and there should be links to the right under Pages. Say what you think. I don't bite and I don't cry often. Also found the following first few paragraphs:

“Have we met before?” we asked ourselves. 

We smiled, laughed, hugged each other like old friends. 

*                    *                    *

Marcus and I discussed the plan deep into a velvet night.  We knew it was risky, that my life might never be the same again, but we struggled to imagine a viable alternative. We settled with a firm handshake and a grim grin. 

We could put nothing in writing - that would downgrade our plot from risky to foolish - so we had to rely on our natural recall to maintain the plan.  But we were professionals.  We had worked together many times before and we knew what we had to do. 

There was only one piece of incriminating evidence, apart from the two of us.  A quantum cubice, holding a complete scan of my brain, its folds, whorls, wrinkles and depths. The synapses mapped, every neurone's position, as of ten minutes ago, accurately recorded.  I had entrusted this to Marcus, my oldest friend, secure in a black-box, protected from electromagnetic scans, deep within Marcus’ overcoat. 

We split in the early hours of the morning, going our separate ways, but careful to make sure neither was followed.  The moon was bright, piercing the stifling dark like a spotlight.  I imagined werewolves howling their appreciation at the wondrous sight. 

I felt like one myself.

Tastes like potential - think I need investigate.
 
Written a lot, most unlike me. Cheeps for now.